House speaker 'not confident' of getting fiscal cliff deal

By Elahe Izadi

September 11, 2012

In light of Tuesday's news that Moody's warned it will downgrade America's credit rating if a deal isn't reached on the fiscal cliff, House Speaker John Boehner said he's "not confident at all" that negotiations will be successful.

"Listen, the House has done its job on both the sequestration and the looming tax hike that will cost our economy 700,000 jobs. The Senate at some point has to act," Boehner told reporters on Tuesday.

If Congress doesn't act by the beginning of next year, a volatile cocktail of tax increases and spending cuts are forecast to throw the country into "significant recession" and lead to the loss of 2 million jobs.

With Bob Woodward's book chronicling the collapse over last summer's debt ceiling negotiations in the news, Boehner said, "I still look at my failure to come to an agreement with the president as the biggest disappointment of my speakership."

But Boehner's not getting too introspective. He still laid the blame for the failed negotiations on President Obama, saying "the president didn't want to have a second round of a fight over increasing the debt limit."